Happenstance
by rightxhere
Summary: It’s been six weeks since she was injured, and Sam’s finally able to rejoin the team...except General Landry’s ordered them all to take the weekend off.


**Title: **Happenstance (1/?)**  
Author:** Demelza**  
****Fandom:** Stargate SG1**  
Pairings:** Sam/Cam**  
****Disclaimer:** Stargate SG1 and its characters belong to Brad Wright, Fox and all their other respective owners. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission purely as a means of entertainment.**  
Spoilers:** The Quest pt2, Line in the Sand**  
Rating: **O15**  
Warnings: **Nothing for this chapter**  
Word Count:** 2,632**  
Summary:** It's been six weeks since she was injured, and Sam's finally able to rejoin the team…except General Landry's ordered them all to take the weekend off.**  
Note:** For the purpose of this story, everything after Line in the Sand never happened. Many thanks to Claire and Hannah for all their input on this fic. Love you girls!

\/

**Cheyenne Mountain Complex****  
Briefing Room  
11:25AM**

"But we haven't found Daniel yet," Vala stated loudly as the General was walking away.

The older man stopped in his steps, his shoulders heaving with a sigh. He turned and looked at each of SG1 in turn. His gaze finally settling on Vala's, he took two small steps forward. "I understand this, Vala. However, the fact remains there are a great number of teams here, and the search for Doctor Jackson _will_ continue."

Her eyes filling with a new round of tears, Vala went to speak but Cam put his hand up, speaking instead. "I guess what Vala's trying to say, General, is that we'd really much rather be out there joining the efforts to bring Jackson back than sitting at home."

Sam, Vala and Teal'c all nodded with silent agreement.

"I know. But I want the four of you rested. It's been nearly two months since your encounter with Adria. And while I understand Colonel Carter has only received clearance to return to active duty this morning, if you don't rest—"

"But, Sir," Cam interrupted, "if we sit on our asses, we're as good as letting the Ori—"

"You risk burning out," General Landry finished, and each of them could feel the finality in his intense gaze, as much as the tone of his words. "It's Friday I will see you back here on Monday morning. Until then, you're dismissed. And please, Colonel Carter, no working from home. I understand from your teammates that even while at home recovering, you were still working, despite the Doctor's orders. This time you'll obey the orders, please."

Sam momentarily looked at the floor. "Yes sir," she said.

Watching him walk out, Vala swore in Gou'ald under her breath. Each of them understood the word, and glanced sideways at her.

"Like you weren't thinking it yourselves," she said, leaving shortly thereafter.

"Indeed," Teal'c murmured, bowing his head to Sam and Cam, before following Vala.

Stepping around a still-seated Sam, Cam put his hands in his pockets, shaking his head. "Can you believe Landry?"

His question met with silence, he sort of turned, glancing down at Sam, and saw the reticent look in her eyes.

"I know you've been through this before. With Jackson. It's just that, I haven't, and, well…I don't exactly like losing members of my team."

"Believe me, I understand," she replied, pushing herself up from the desk and stepping over to Cam. "But Landry's right. If we exhaust all our energy without taking a small break at some point, we can pretty much kiss goodbye to finding Daniel."

Cam swallowed, holding Sam's gaze for a long moment. "You think he's still…alive?"

At that, her breath caught. "To be honest? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not." She gave him a small shrug. "On the other hand, with all of Merlin's knowledge in his mind now, my bet's on Adria keeping him alive until she gets out of him what she wants."

"Yeah," he murmured. "My bet's on that too."

Nodding, Sam tapped him on the underside of his arm, inclining her head toward the door. "Wherever he is, we'll get him back."

"We better."

She cast a sideways glance at him while they walked. She wasn't surprised he cared so much, but it was surprising to see that reaction in a man like Cam. A man whom she knew only too well kept as much distance from things like this as he could. Not that she could blame him at all.

"I can't take much more of Vala crying," he said, making Sam snort with a chuckle. She was smiling, having not expect that reaction, when he said, "What was so funny?"

"It's just…not at all what I thought you were going to say, that's all," she replied.

"Why, what were you expecting?"

She bit her lower lip, fighting a grin when he was being so serious, especially with his eyebrows all furrowed like they were. "Nothing."

They continued their long walk through the corridors, when they stopped at the elevator and Cam leaned toward Sam, whispering, "Liar," in her ear.

She turned her head, staring at him. "It took you _that long_ to come back with that?"

"No," he simply replied, saying nothing more.

\/

**Half an Hour Later**

Though Sam was in her civilian clothing, she was still on base, and still in front of her computer in her lab, when there was a knock.

Looking up, she saw Cam standing in the doorway, dressed in his brown leather jacket, a tight gray t-shirt and blue jeans. "Cameron," she said with a smile. "I was just finishing up some notations."

He stepped inside, an amused smirk forming on his lips. "You're a creature of habit, Carter."

She smiled, though more to herself than him. She liked being a creature of habit. Further, she rather liked that he didn't seem to have a problem with the fact she was one. _Unlike a certain General._ "I know. And, thank you," she said, typing in a little more of what she had planned to be her final paragraph.

When he didn't answer, she looked up at him. His amusement had faded, and instead it was replaced with a rather perplexed expression. One that seemed to cause the words '_how can he be so adorable when he looks like that?_' to pop into mind.

Her own thoughts shocking her a little, she cleared her throat. "Cameron?"

"Thank you for what?" he said, gaze meeting and holding hers.

"For not holding the fact I'm a creature of habit against me."

"Ah. Never. You are who you are. Besides, your work is important to you, Sam. And I respect that."

Immediately floored by his statement, she stared at him. "Wow, Cam, that's…"

"_However._"

"Oh," she said, groaning. "I should've expected that."

He stepped around her desk with a smile, tapping his fingers on the closed folder beside her laptop. "General Landry did expressly tell us this weekend was to involve absolutely no work at all. You more so than anyone else."

"I'm almost done, I swear. Just…two more lines. That's it."

"_And,_ you can finish it. What I'm talking about, Sam," he paused on her name, his smirk from before returning. He had a look in his eyes as though he had something big planned. "Is getting you away from it all."

Sam sat quietly a moment, looking back at the opened document on her laptop, the cursor flickering at the last written paragraph on page seven. She was resolute to even considering going along with whatever Cam had planned, but, on the other hand, she was feeling a touch curious.

With a soft, inaudible sigh, she closed her eyes and, finding her voice, she asked, "And what would you have us do?"

\/

It was some time later, and Sam and Cam were in Cam's Mustang, and they were less than two hours away from his parents home in Auburn, Kansas. They'd left the base almost seven hours ago, and both had taken an hour to get some things together before setting off on their road trip.

Sam sat in the passenger seat, wondering if she'd lost her mind, or if perhaps she was in the midst of losing it. Actually, she was nervous. But it was sort of the same thing, wasn't it?

Her nerves were unsettled because, though she'd met Cam's parents several times before, the times she had had been brief, and when Cam was lying in the hospital after the Antarctica incident, and as such she'd never really had the time to _meet _them properly.

Of course, there was also the rest of his family on her mind. She'd only ever met one of his nephews, however briefly, but for the rest she had heard a great number of vividly wild and practically fantastical things about them, she had to admit she felt a little intimidated at the prospect of meeting them.

What unsettled her nerves even more was in trying to figure out _why _meeting his parents, and his family, made her feel nervous. Except for her first few years in the Air Force, she didn't do nervous. She'd _thought _she'd outgrown it.

"Relax, Sam," Cam said, breaking her from her thoughts. "They'll be more scared of you than you are of them."

She cast him a sideways glance, caught the grin on his lips. "That's easy for you to say. You—"

"—grew up with them, yeah," Cam finished, and Sam looked away, smiling to herself. "Besides, Dad insisted I bring you with me so that we can hopefully get this engine rebuilt for the old Fairlane we've almost finished restoring."

"Your dad has a _Fairlane_?" She sat up straight, staring at him. "You told me the car was a classic, Cam, but not a Fairlane."

He flashed her a grin. "Oh, did I not mention she was a fifty-eight, cherry-red and white, Ford Fairlane Skyliner retractable?"

She almost took a swipe at him then for having kept that fact from her, but instead kept her hand where it was, resting on the edge of her seat. "No. You didn't. Maybe if you did I'd have insisted you drive a little faster so we'd have gotten there sooner."

He continued to grin, chuckling softly. "Well, we're not so far away now."

"It's almost ten."

"Yeah, but my parents will still be up."

Sam smiled warmly. "Think your Dad will let us see the Fairlane?"

He looked back at her, met her smile with one of his own. "Depends."

"On?"

"Whether or not he's tucked her in for the night."

At that, a gentle laugh escaped from Sam. "Good point."

\/

Arriving in Auburn, it was a short drive to Cam's parents' home on 18th Street. When they pulled to a stop outside the front gate, Sam climbed out of the Mustang and immediately stretched her back. It had been a long drive with a few stops along the way, but once it began to get darker the breaks had stopped.

"Damn," Cam said, disappointedly. "Looks like Dad's got the old girl locked away already."

"Oh well," Sam said with a light shrug.

"Anyway, didn't I tell you they'd still be up though?" Cam said, looking over the roof of the car and up at the house. The downstairs lights were all on, and it was only a matter of moments before the front porch lit up and the door was opened.

"Cameron!" his mother called out.

Sam was grabbing her bag from behind her seat when she heard Cam's mother. The excitement in her voice reminded her of the way her mother would call out to her after school when she was small.

Swallowing the thought away, she hooked the strap of her bag on her shoulder as she stood up, closing the passenger door.

"Uh, here she comes," Cam said, surprising Sam with his presence to her left, near the front fender of his truck. "Remember, don't look so startled," he teased.

Wendy Mitchell, her dark hair a lot longer than when Sam had last seen her two years ago, looked otherwise the same as she remembered.

When she approached, Wendy immediately pulled Sam into a tight hug, before letting go and pulling her youngest child into what Sam could only imagine, from the look on Cam's face, as being akin to a bear hug.

Fighting to not laugh aloud at the grimace on Cam's face, Sam waited until Wendy had let go of him before saying, "Thanks for having us, Mrs Mitchell."

"Please, call me Wendy dear."

"Yes ma'am," Sam replied.

"Right, let's get the pair of you settled, shall we?" Wendy looked between the two of them, before turning and starting walking.

"Sounds good," Cam said, following behind his mother, Sam matching his stride step for step.

They walked through the front gate, up the path and onto the porch. There, Wendy led them inside and Sam was surprised at the warmth that met her. It wasn't so much physical, as it was a general homely feeling she hadn't felt in a very, very long time. She made a note to have a proper glance around at the family photographs and ornaments in the morning, and kept at Cam's pace.

Wendy stopped them at a cupboard at the bottom of the stairs and gathered two extra blankets. "It's a little chilly in the spare room. We had the windows open airing the room all day, and I forgot to close them until late. These will keep you warm, though."

"Thank you," Sam said, while Cam accepted the blankets, handing one to Sam.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Cameron. Your sister is here. She and Russell are in her room, while Bailey and Michael are in your old room, so that puts the pair of you in your brother's room. Don't worry, I've done it up so it no longer looks a storage closet filled to the rafters with useless junk," she said with a chuckle.

Sam's eyes went wide, her mind focusing on the _'so that puts the pair of you in your brother's room'_.

"Kelly's here?" Cam said, his voice slightly high pitched.

Sam swallowed hard when Wendy nodded.

"Mary and Joseph," he murmured, though loud enough for Sam and his mother to hear. Wendy swatted her son on the arm.

"Language, Cameron. And yes, your sister is here. With her family. That means where, normally, you know where I would stand about the pair of you sharing a bed under your father's roof…as it's just for this one weekend, I'll allow it."

"Wendy, Cam and I, we're not—"

Before Sam could finish, a bell sounded in the kitchen and Wendy quickly looked toward the kitchen. "Cameron, you two go upstairs and settle in for the night. I've got another batch of cookies to put in for tomorrow. Go sleep, you've had a long drive." She was moving towards the door before either one of them could argue with her on the matter.

When she was through the swinging door and out of view, Sam turned and stared at Cam, waiting for him to say something, _anything_.

Only, he was speechless, _and _he was still staring at the door to the kitchen.

Taking a moment to think, Sam let out a low exhale. "Well, it's not like we've never…"

"She thinks we're…"

"…slept…"

"…sleeping together."

"…close quart—" Sam stopped mid-sentence, the shock of Cam's words – a reality she was trying to keep at bay – hitting her. She swallowed. "Maybe we can…sort it out with her in the morning?"

Cam turned his head, slowly, finally meeting Sam's gaze. "Y-yeah. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all," she replied, moving towards the staircase. She looked over her shoulder at him, felt the corner of her mouth quirking with a small smirk. "You get the floor."

She was four steps up the staircase when Cam finally began to follow after her. "Me? Why do I get the floor?"

About midway up, Sam stopped them both, turned and looked down at him, leaning her back against the wall for support. "Because I'm oldest, and seniority ranks higher. Thereby, seniority rules the junior Lieutenant Colonel sleeps on the floor."

"You can't pull rank on me."

She turned and continued up the stairs. "Oh can't I just?"

"Hell no."

"You force me away from my laptop, I can _and will_ do anything I so please to you," she said, her voice serious but there was a gleam of humor in her eyes he couldn't see. In the back of her mind, a small voice played with her, wondering if she wasn't enjoying this moment a little too much?


End file.
